


The Moon Man

by adhddyke



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe- No Pennywise, Angst, Chaotic Narrative, Implied/Referenced ADHD, Internalised Homophobia, M/M, Me? Projecting? Never!, Platonic Stozier, Reddie, References to Homophobia, Slight Suicidal Thought, The others Losers are here but barely so I'm not tagging them, Warning: homophobic slurs, angst with an optimistic ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-11-02 11:53:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20737184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adhddyke/pseuds/adhddyke
Summary: When Richie Tozier was a kid, he believed that he was an alien.When Richie Tozier was fifteen, he wished he could be an alien, because at least then he’d have an excuse for being as Wrong as he was.





	The Moon Man

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoy! It took way too long for what it is probably but time is an illusion so who cares

When Richie Tozier was a kid, he believed that he was an alien. He made a whole list why: 

‘1- HUGE glasses! Sure, other kids have glasses, but not like THESE! I have eyes for a place other than earth I think probably, and the stars seem so much CLEARER than people’s faces even STAN’s or EDDIE’s 

2- I have different ENERGY!- I move and talk WEIRDLY ((apparently)) and not like the OTHERS at ALL, like my MIND is some other THING and my parents say it’s A-OKAY but maybe they were BRAINWASHED on a UFO by my real ALIEN parents 

3- TOES(ier haha) my TOES are strange they’re LONGER and SEPARATED like a FROG and frogs aren’t aliens but MAYBE i AM 

4- CAN’T HEAR the teachers SOMETIMES probably because they speak EARTH TONGUES and that’s not natural to me but it’s like I’ll just BLINK and they’ll be five different conversations AWAY, like a TIME SKIP 

5- the PYRAMIDS are really cool and BILL said that ALIENS built that and EDDIE agreed but maybe just because it was BILL who said it and he is ALWAYS RIGHT but if ALIENS built PYRAMIDS it makes sense why I THINK they’re NIFTY

6- my HEAD is kinda shaped like an ALIEN’s in some of the MOVIES!!’

Certainly, some of those points were fairly redundant, but Richie believed it with all his heart. Sometimes he got scared that the aliens were going to come and take him back to his home planet, and he didn’t want to go. He liked his parents. He liked his friends. It wasn’t his fault if he was born as an alien. So he went to bed with tinfoil on his head, and kept the BB gun he used to play Cowboys with his friends sometimes right on his bedside table, next to a tub of table salt in case he could melt them like slugs. 

One night, too restless to stay in bed, Richie sat at the desk by his bedroom window, playing as quietly as he could with his HUMAN action figures, not wanting to wake up his parents (again), when he got distracted by something in the sky, silver and shimmery. He began to sweat, seeing the object near, and he ran to his parents’ bedroom, already crying. 

“I saw it!” He sobbed to them. “I saw it I saw it I saw it!”

“Richie, baby, what’s wrong? What did you see?” His “mother” asked as his dad grumbled and turned over in bed, used to his son’s antics. 

“The UFO!” Richie managed. “It’s come to take me back, back to the moon or something!” “The moon? What, are you the moon man?” She seemed amused, and Richie didn’t Get That. 

“Don’t let them take me back!” Richie begged.

“Okay,” she said, sounding like she didn’t Get Him. “I won’t let them take you, but you’ve gotta go to sleep, sweetie. What were you doing up, huh?” Richie didn’t see how it was relevant- after all, aliens had come to KIDNAP him- and it only convinced him more that he was an alien, since apparently being up then was not right or Human. 

At the very least, Richie’s friends had been more understanding, mostly. 

“If you’re an alien, so am I,” Stan frowned. “We’re opposites, so what you say is Human is in the middle. And I’m not an alien.” 

“Maybe you are,” Richie tried to reason with him. “Maybe we’re from rival species, sent to see who can take over first. If my species made the pyramids, maybe yours made the Stonehenge. How tall is the Stonehenge? It seems like it’d be small. Like Eddie.” “Hey!” Eddie whined, but he was small. “And I was believing you too!”

“Really?” Richie and Stan asked at once, which only proved Richie’s alternate species theory more. 

“Well, you saw that thing,” Eddie reminded them. “What else could it be?”

“Anything else?” Stan suggested. 

“Exactly! It was a spaceship!” Richie was eternally grateful. He noticed a grey rock at his feet that sort of looked like a spaceship, but he knew it would sink, not fly. 

Bill was quiet, musing over it, considering the very convincing evidence (to an eight year old) on both sides.

“I think it was a spaceship,” Bill stuttered, but they were used to it. Richie wondered whether stuttering meant Bill might be an alien too, maybe sent to spy on him, struggling with the earth-tongue, and Eddie seemed to be sick if what he said was true, but Richie and Eddie both didn’t seem to know why, so maybe Eddie needed the medication to deal with earth-air, and he was an alien as well. Maybe Derry was full of aliens. But Richie thought of his mother and how she didn’t Get It and figured maybe it was just his friends. “But I don’t think Richie’s an alien. Or Stan.” Oh. That did surprise Richie. 

“Well, why not?” Eddie wondered. 

“I just don’t see why he would be,” Bill shrugged.

“I showed you the list!” Richie argued. 

“I don’t see it though,” Bill replied. “Sorry if you wanted to be one.” “I don’t want to be one, I’m scared because I am one!” Richie protested. 

“You are not an alien!” Stan seemed to be growing frustrated. Maybe he would forget to maintain Human form. 

“Why don’t you want to be an alien?” Eddie questioned. “Aliens are so cool. They get to live in the stars and look at different planets and have bright skin!” 

“Aw, that means you think I’m cool! Cute, cute, cute!” Richie deflected, then deflated. “But I want to be Human.”

“Well, I’d rather you were an alien, so,” Eddie dragged a stick around in the dirt, drawing a pattern like a crop circle. Richie joined him in that, intrigued by the swirly pattern (by GOD he was an ALIEN for sure) and Bill helped out hesitantly, making much neater lines than Eddie’s too-cautious ones and Richie’s erratic ones. Stan sat and watched sulkily. 

“You’re not an alien,” Stan said again as the two walked back to their homes again. 

“If you don’t believe me, you’re not my best friend anymore,” Richie replied. “Eddie believes me. Bill almost believes me.” 

“Fine,” Stan snapped. “I don’t want to be best friends with someone who thinks they’re an alien anyway. Why can’t you just be a weird Human?” 

“Then I hate you,” Richie paused, wondering whether he should use one of Those weirds, “bitch.”

(But they still walked down to the Barrens together to play there with Bill and Eddie again the next morning. Stan picked a piece of tin foil out of Richie’s hair. They were still best friends. Richie figured it was because aliens had to stick together because the Humans were just too different.)

***

When Richie Tozier was fifteen, he wished he could be an alien, because at least then he’d have an excuse for being as Wrong as he was. 

The first time he realised it, it was after an unwelcome stray thought while swimming at the quarry with the rest of the Losers. It was a sunny day, so the light was hitting Richie’s (alien) eyes all wrong, and he could see even less than he usually could without his glasses on (because he had already lost one pair while swimming, he had to keep them aside). Eddie Kaspbrak in all his short, maybe-asthatic glory emerged from the water in an Aphrodite-like image (they had studied Greek myth in school, and the goddess of love had come from the sea foam, and Richie knew a kid who was a water birth though it wasn’t Eddie actually so that was irrelevant), water dripping from his brown hair which was matted to his skull, the sun hitting him just right. Maybe that was more dog-like than divine, but Richie realised he just thought Eddie was divine, a god on earth, and that was wrong, that was bad, that was not supposed to be Human and Richie knew he wasn’t an alien now, but god he wished he could be the Moon Man again because the Moon Man was from some other place where Eddie could be godlike. But Richie was Human and Richie was Wrong. 

There’s a way that Ben watched Beverly with so much love in his eyes as they splashed each other, and Richie thought that that is normal and Human and good. And sure, Beverly was pretty, but Richie could not imagine making her a god. He felt Stan’s frown on him, but ignored it. He submerged himself in the water to see how long he can breathe for. Maybe if he wished hard enough he could be back in the womb again and be reborn as a Human Human, not an alien human, or he could be born on the moon and just be a full-fledged alien and still himself, so he’d be normal anyway. 

As always, he walked back with Stan, still best friends. But he hated how aware and sharp Stan could be. It was no wonder he had been convinced Stan was an alien, too. 

“You seemed off earlier,” Stan commented, and Richie stared at his hands, making a motion like he was dusting them off, avoiding looking at Stan and his stupid owl eyes (maybe he could offer to birdwatch with Stan to shut him up). “When you were looking at Eddie.” “I just couldn’t see, dumbass,” Richie laughed. The laugh sounded Wrong, Richie knew. On the moon, no one would have heard it. Once, Bill had told him that the moon landing was faked so that the government could be better than the Soviet Union. Then Richie longed for nuclear war, so he couldn’t exist to be either right or Wrong, an alien or Human. 

“I Get It, Richie,” Stan said, his voice too serious. “Sometimes I look at some people the same way, and I Get how it makes you feel.” 

“What people?” Richie asked, oddly quiet, and he knew he was being quiet, an unspoken surrender. 

“Bill,” Stan whispered. “Mike.” There was a moment of silence before Richie cried out with hysterical laughter, falling to the ground. He knew that the knees in his jeans had just split because of that. His mother would make him sew them up again, for the millionth time. His jeans made him look like Frankenstein’s Monster. He laughed harder. 

“Why are you laughing?” Stan asked, looking almost frightened, and that stopped Richie from laughing. 

“You remember, right?” Richie asked.

“Remember what? I can’t read your fucking mind,” and that was probably definitely hurt in his voice. 

“I was so convinced we were both aliens,” Richie reminded him. “Guess I was right. Kinda. So we’re Human. We’re doing a shit job of it. Oh my god, we should run away, start a freak show.”

“Fuck you,” Stan hissed, and Richie frowned. Stan had Got It but Richie did not Get it in return. He withheld more laughter. “I’m Human. I’m fine. If you want to be an alien still, that’s fine, but don’t try and make me like one.” 

“Woah, you’re the Tin Foil Man, you heartless beast!” Richie exclaimed. “Free yourself of the foil, welcome the aliens to us. We’ll be better off.” 

“No,” is all Stan replied. “It’s nearly six. I won’t have time to wash my hands before dinner if I don’t hurry up now. Goodbye, Richie.” 

Richie watched Stan leave and hoped that they were still best friends. He didn’t mean to mess up like he was prone to doing. A bit annoyed at himself for upsetting Stan, he decided to avoid going home just yet. He went to the Kissing Bridge and sat at the edge and wondered when someone would find his body if he just Slipped and Fell into the water. Maybe the aliens he had once thought were his parents would come and take it for a space funeral on the Moon. There was a knife in his pocket. The blade was stainless steel, and pretty worn. He could easily cut his skin with it, though. He stopped that train of thought. That was Wrong and he needed to be Human. He wasn’t an alien, no matter what he wanted now. He thought of Eddie. Eddie had wanted him to be an alien over a Human, even when Richie wanted it to be the other way. So maybe Eddie didn’t need him to be Human, didn’t mind him being Wrong. Just another way Eddie could prove perfect. They could live on the Moon together, Richie thought, the Moon Man and HIS HUSBAND.

Then, intrusively: that was a pretty fucking QUEER thing to think about, Richie. Better to be an alien, he told himself, then he’d be a normal alien and he could go back to space and away from Derry. But he was in Derry, and he was on the Kissing Bridge, and he was Human, so he did a Wrong thing and used his stupid knife to carve ‘R+E’ into the wood of the bridge. Looking at it made him hurt, and the hurt was an awful Human thing. Richie hated it. He figured he should apologise to Stan. But that could wait. 

***

The next day, Richie walked to the Barrens with Stan again, who did not bother bringing up their previous argument.

“Sorry,” Richie brought it up all by himself. Somewhere, those alien parents he needed to have had to be proud. “You’re Human.” “I guess I’d like to be an alien sometimes,” Stan replied. “But that doesn’t help, in the end, because I’m still Human. I had to get used to being Human. It’s not impossible.” 

“I don’t know what you’re on about,” Richie grinned, that smile all his friends knew only existed when he was about to do a Voice. He attempted a spooky one: “I’m the Moooooon Man!”

“You’re the Earth Man,” Stan corrected, and Richie frowned. Being the Earth Man would mean Richie being Richie would be normal for the Earth, and it wasn’t, he knew it. The Moon was outside that. He was the Moon Man, he told himself. Earth was someone else’s, and he wasn’t going to say it out loud, but it wasn’t Stan’s, because Stan was sort of like him but also Not (rival species, that’s what they aren’t but should be- aliens). 

Eddie looked especially pretty that day, even running from Henry Bowers. He fell in the chase and skinned his knees and for the first time EVER (at least as well as Richie can remember, and his memory isn’t great but he’s pretty good at remembering Eddie stuff) Eddie doesn’t express any concern about an infection. Richie wants to kiss his knee better. Richie wants to be an alien. 

That day, Richie also noticed how casually affectionate his friends could be (so weird to be so observant, this was how STAN was, not him), and how Wrong that would be if he did it because there would be something gross underneath, something kind of slobbery (he thinks of a rabid dog, if he was a dog he would probably be one of those loud, annoying chihuahuas but with long legs like a spider-chihuahua crossbreed). Alien Richie could have been normally affectionate, like Bill and Mike and Ben and Bev and even his poor Eddie, who Richie longed to see as an alien. Thinking of Bill and Mike made him realise how much that affection must have tortured Stan. Indeed, Stan seemed awkward receiving hands to help him up and comfort-hugs from the two after the run-in with Bowers (Richie tried to remember how it started, but he couldn’t, and it had probabaly been important- probably Bowers had called them fags or something). But if Stan had been alien, he could’ve taken that love with no problem. God, Richie longed for the Moon and the stars. 

(Stan left early, and walked home alone, so Richie would have too, as well. Clearly, Stan was not as happy being Human as he had tried to convince Richie he was. But Richie Got It. He liked to Pretend. He did the Voices. He pretended he was an alien to himself. It made things better. It was better than being Richie Tozier, a Human.) 

Richie did decide to walk Eddie home, since Stan was already gone. 

“You’ve seemed weird recently,” Eddie said. Richie realised this meant Eddie had been paying attention to him and of course he had because that was friendly and friendliness was Human, unlike how Richie was. “You know, you don’t have to joke with me.” “Just haven’t seen your mom in a while,” Richie tried. “Got a lot of pent-up energy.” 

“You leave my mom alone!” Eddie whined. 

“Ha, you’re like the dragon defending the virgin honour of your maiden mother,” Richie joked. The jokes weren’t Human jokes they were alien jokes and Richie was the Moon Man. 

“I can only wish I could burn you alive,” Eddie sighed dramatically. 

“Yowza!” Richie replied. He was losing it, losing himself, losing whatever Voice he was playing, because Eddie was too good and Human and Richie should’ve been an alien and he wasn’t sure who he was supposed to pretend to be with Eddie. After his hesitation, he plays Confident and ((Straight)) again. “I don’t need to be made any hotter, Eds. I’m already pretty much the sun.” (The Moon). 

Unfortunately, they reached Eddie’s house too soon, which was another pretty fucking Wrong thing to think. 

“Say ‘hi’ to your mom for me,” Richie requested.

“No,” Eddie deadpanned. “And you still seem funny.”

“Aw, I knew you thought I was hilarious really!” Richie twisted the words, made reality what he wanted to. Maybe if he succeeded here, he could become an alien after all. 

“You remember when we were kids, and you were convinced you were an alien?” Eddie asked, and Richie nodded, stunned. He wanted to tune out, but for once, he could not. “I really wanted you to be one, huh? Because I liked that you were different. I liked you for you, Richie. That hasn’t changed, no matter how much we joke about you being annoying or crazy. So if that’s upsetting you…” “You like me for me?” Richie wondered whether he needed to laugh or cry- he remembered laughing and Stan not looking happy about it and guilt struck his stomach. 

“Jeez, Richie, of course I do. I’ve been your friend for ages, haven’t I?” Eddie frowned. “Come on, you can talk to me, you know? Maybe I Get It.” 

“I don’t think you’d like me for me,” Richie let himself laugh, thinking about Aids, about how much Eddie hated germs and how much fear he harboured for Aids. Aliens probably couldn’t get Aids, Richie thought. But Eddie’s eyes seemed to bore into his soul. 

“You’re an idiot, Richie Tozier,” Eddie said, and he leaned up onto the tips of his toes to kiss Richie on the cheek, before running away and disappearing. 

Richie figured he didn’t need a spaceship anymore. Eddie had just launched him right into the sky.

***

Apparently, Eddie’s mom had been at the window. Eddie was in conversion therapy somewhere. All Richie could think was how right he had been about how Wrong it all was, and how much he had ruined Eddie, perfect Aphrodite Eddie, just by being himself. Wrong Humans needed to be changed, but there was no conversion therapy for aliens. 

People stared at him. He bounced his leg too much and spoke too much. It wasn’t even the Eddie thing, no one knew that. It was worse than Richie thought. How Wrong he was was not just buried, not just that one awful thing. The whole world could see how he was not supposed to be Human. Item Number 2, Richie remembered, and he went over the R+E carving on the Kissing Bridge. Fuck being Human, Richie thought. 

***

When Eddie came back, Richie and Eddie were both sixteen. Eddie looked more like Hades than Aphrodite now, Richie thought. A dark cloud clung to him, and his bright eyes had dulled to exhaustion. He was physically becoming an alien, Richie thought, and he missed Human Eddie. Most of their friends didn’t Get It- only Richie and Stan Knew, because it was a secret. So there was so much concern, like when Bill seemed pretty insane after his brother died. But all Richie could wonder was how much concern there would be if Bill and Mike and Bev and Ben Knew, because the Humans had always made the aliens villains. Also, he wanted to see Sonia Kaspbrak dead. 

Eddie had started to smoke with Richie, which he never would have done before (Richie supposed Eddie also wanted to see Sonia Kaspbrak dead now), sometimes at the Kissing Bridge. They never kissed, though. That was dangerous and Wrong. They would have to go to the Moon to be able to do that. 

“I wish I was an alien,” Richie confessed to his maybe-boyfriend. 

“I wish we were Human,” Eddie replied, and Richie thought he might Get It. 

Sometimes, Stan joined them at the Bridge, but he never carved initials of his own there. Sometimes he would try and erase those words about how Wrong the three of them were, those words that were all over Derry including the Kissing Bridge, a place of romance, and what they felt was not allowed to be called romance, not Human romance. Richie and Eddie helped most of the time after they realised what he had been doing. Maybe they could rewrite Human (they could not). 

(When Bowers broke Eddie’s arm, they had ‘Losers’ corrected to ‘Lovers’ on the cast, but Richie couldn’t help but think his friends might’ve left it as ‘Losers’ if they knew what sort of love Eddie had. When he told Stan and Eddie as much, Stan had suggested breaking Richie’s arm and writing ‘Aliens’ on the cast for him. Richie had laughed. He still liked to laugh. They all still tried to laugh.)

***

When Richie Tozier was eighteen, he wasn’t certain what he was, but he knew he wasn’t a citizen of Derry anymore. The three of them were hurtling down the road (Eddie did drive so fast), going to college, going to Somewhere New. Richie loved Eddie and Eddie loved Richie, and Stan might have the chance to feel love. They were Losers and Aliens and Lovers at once- and maybe they would get the courage to tell the others one day, but for now they knew they were safe. 

“It’s a spaceship,” Stan said suddenly, and Richie saluted him. 

“I’m the Moon Man,” Richie told him. Stan didn’t argue with it. Maybe they weren’t driving to the moon, but they would be driving to the Moon, hopefully. 

“Told you you were best like this,” Eddie smiled.

The spaceship reeked of hope, desperation, and something distinctly not Human. Maybe that could be okay, maybe it wasn’t. All Richie knew was that he was going to let himself learn. He was the Moon Man, but he was also Richie Tozier, and he figured that didn’t have to be terrible or Wrong. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please avoid butchering me!


End file.
